It's presumably mostly Spanish-speaking content for Spanish-speaking audiences.
Yes you can get Vancouver to stand in for New York City. No, you can't get Mexico to stand in for the US in most scenarios.
I'd disagree. A lot of CDMX, Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Leon looks like a similar if slightly dated version of LA, San Jose, or flatland parts of SF and Oakland - sort of like a 1980s or 1990s kind of aesthetic because of Mexico's economic boom back then.
But this is absolutely about Spanish language content for the Hispanoblante world.
Mexico was the original "China". China began booming in the 2000s because Mexico became expensive so a lot of low margins manufacturing left Tijuana and Guadalajara for Tianjin and Guangzhou [0], the same way how you now see manufacturing leaving China for cost reasons having a similar economic impact/shock [1].
It's telling that China only caught up with Mexico's GDP per Capita and HDI around 2019-20, and economic issues similar to those in Mexico in the 2000s (excluding the drug war related ones) began manifesting in China as well.
For example, NPR [2], NYT [3][4], and BBC [5] reports from the early 2000s about Mexico are pretty similar to those you'd hear about China today.
History doesn't repeat but it sure does rhyme.
[0] - http://international-economy.com/TIE_Sp03_Rosen.pdf
[1] - https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/cfer-2024-002...
[2] - https://www.npr.org/2003/12/22/1556267/mexican-economy-strug...
[3] - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/20/business/mexico-s-jobless...
[4] - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/business/mexico-misses-gr...
Off-topic kindof but it tickles my brain that the names are similar (Ti~, Gua~)
However, films targeting Latin + South America audiences might do really well if filmed in Mexico. So the expansion is probably mostly about catering to that market.
To be honest, I don't envy Netflix's position. They release a show, it's culturally relevant for 2-8 weeks, and then they have to release another show to keep the subscriptions active. Traditional television has weekly releases that maintained relevance longer. Movies generate much more revenue per hour on content in theaters, and have long term licensing revenue. Their P/E ratio is higher than other content companies that offer similar streaming services, so shareholders expect revenue growth but their developed world marketshare doesn't have room for growth. So now they are going after new audiences, but they are targeting markets where their subscription fees are way lower, and they'll be on the same hamster wheel of keeping audiences engaged.
I live in Prague and there's a huge movie industry with lots of American movies being shot on sound stages here. To give one example off the top of my head, all of the Narnia movies were shot here.
That said, I'm not sure Netflix cares from that regard. They've been pushing me increasingly foreign content that I don't particularly care for, because it's usually dubbed horribly or not at all.
I'm of course not against it existing in their library, but I'd have thought their recommendation engine would realize I'm not at all interested in it by now.
Here in mainland Europe we're more open to content from all kinds of places. I think part of it is because we're used to not being able to understand every language. There's so many here we can never speak them all. Thus subs or dubbing are common things and don't ruin the immersion for us. In English speaking countries (even in Europe) those are often considered weird, alternative or "arthouse".
That said most of the time I have the TV on I'm doing something else, and watch/listen in passing, so audio is really important. The dubbing on most movies is so, so bad. 60 year old gruff men sounding like a kid, everyone having the same weird enthusiastic tone, etc. The worst is the distancing, everyone sounds like they're talking directly into a mic despite where the camera is.
I really wish they'd invest more into the dubbing process, a well dubbed movie or show is completely watchable to me. And given the growing corpus of foreign content, I think it's a necessity. It's just so rare I usually don't even bother trying anymore.
Some people find subtitles distracting but where I grew up all foreign content had them (including all English content) and they're just natural to me. I prefer this over dubbing because it never sounds as good as the original voice track.
[0] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/european-w...
It's not that dubbing can generally be considered weird in a particular culture, it's that it's just really shitty in English. I'm fluent in English and French. I'd also hardly had any experience with dubbed content at all when I started sampling Netflix's foreign offering. When I started, I picked English. It was really off-putting. I was ready to rule out dubbing altogether, then on a whim I tried the French (from France) dubbing and the difference is incredible. So, I think some countries just have more experience doing this kind of work. Americans don't seem to have it, aside from animation that is.